Jury Decision Quotes

Personally, I am opposed to capital punishment. . . . If there were some way devised to prevent . . . the extension of executive clemency to men who are sent up for life, if there were some way to keep them in for life, then I believe the public would be satisfied with the abolition of capital punishment. . . . In 1907 I was appointed to prosecute a man for one of the foulest cases of wife murder that I ever knew. . . . When the jury went out the first ballot was eleven for hanging and one for life imprisonment. . . . The second ballot was twelve for life imprisonment. . . . It is not seventeen years since I tried that case and yet this man is walking the streets to-day a free man by the action of some subsequent governor of Indiana, who pardoned or paroled over my protest. There will either have to be some way provided to keep these fellows in for life when they are once sent there, or those of us who are opposed to hanging will have to give our unwilling consent to the execution of these wilful and deliberate murderers.

The O.J. Simpson case, they had no understanding of that DNA evidence, and didn't want to.

I quite like the idea - just as an abstract idea - of 12 people's collective life experience and wisdom being this formidable thing. People say juries can be led - I think 12 people from different backgrounds, different races, different genders, different ages, it's hard to hoodwink.

After the verdict was read in the Simpson case, as the jury was leaving, one of them, I was later told, said, 'We think he probably did it. We just didn't think they proved it beyond a reasonable doubt.'

Practically, every defense lawyer knows that the jury desperately wants to hear from the defendant and that the only reason not to put him on the stand is that he is soooo guilty that every answer he gives after his name will eradicate any shred of reasonable doubt.

The defendant wants to hide the truth because he's generally guilty. The defense attorney's job is to make sure the jury does not arrive at that truth.

Being on a grand jury felt like attending a series of hangings in a legal Wild West. Hands up for a true bill. Hands up for a dismissal. A show of hands to save a life, or to end it.

We've actually seen Black man murders [in] many a major city in the United States - New York City, St. Louis, Missouri, from Cleveland to Baltimore. It was those sorts of incidents that were very much prevalent in the forefront of that jury's conscience that allowed them to believe that this man [O.J. Simpson] could have been set up.

A reasonable doubt is nothing more than a doubt for which reasons can be given. The fact that 1 or 2 men out of 12 differ from the others does not establish that their doubts are reasonable.

I always wait until a jury has spoken before I anticipate what they will do.

I hardly expected the grand jury to sustain me, after they saw everything different from what it had been while I was there. Yet they did, and their report to the court advises all the changes made that I had proposed.

Any good trial lawyer knows that if you've got one credible expert or scientific study, then you can let the jury decide.

Juries must, of necessity, be governed, in reaching many results through inferences from other facts, by certain laws of nature and human reason. They are often obliged to infer one thing from another, and this, whether that other be a fact direct or circumstantial.

In our system, we leave questions of fact to a jury. But to render a verdict, a jury must know the law. For this, we rely upon jury instructions. Instructions are supposed to translate the law into lay terms that the jury can apply to the facts as they determine them.

The 5th Amendment guarantees that defendants can't face 'double jeopardy,' which means the government can't prosecute a person a second time for the same crime if the jury returns a verdict. Only if the jury doesn't reach a decision can prosecutors elect to retry the case.

The jury passing on the prisoner's life may in the sworn twelve have a thief or two guiltier than him they try.

The debate can be put in the form of the question: Resolved, that the best of money managers cannot be demonstrated to be able to deliver the goods of superior portfolio-selection performance. Any jury that reviews the evidence, and there is a great deal of relevant evidence, must at least come out with the Scottish verdict: Superior investment performance is unproved.

Juries are not computers. They are composed of human beings who evaluate evidence differently.

I don't care whether the person is guilty or not guilty. It's not my business to establish guilt or innocence. It's a court of law that does that and a jury does that, but not me.

Every year, the Giller jury is different. You write the best book you can and throw it out there.

In Los Angeles, the jury in the Reginald Denny Beating trial, after much thinking, concludes, that Person A is not necessarily trying to kill Person B just because Person A happens to very deliberately bash Person B's skull in with a brick. The verdict is applauded by scientists at the Tobacco Institute.

The verdict of a jury is the a priori opinion of that juror who smokes the worst cigars.

What individual can so well assess the amount of damages which a plaintiff ought to recover for an injury he has received than an intelligent jury?

If it doen't make sense, you should find for the defense.

Only a very foolish lawyer will dare guess the outcome of a jury trial.